The Film The Crowd Directed by King Vidor - Movie Review Example

 The film “The Crowd”, which was directed by King Vidor, is an examination of the American Dream and what it means to those that believe in it. This story follows the life of John Sims, who is a man who arrives on a ferry in New York City with the expectation that he will be highly successful in his capitalist society. What he quickly finds out, however, is that he does not matter as an individual, as he is simply just another face in the crowd of society. John’s life becomes very unhappy because of his insignificance and many parallels can be drawn to the short story “Wakefield” and the novel Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, because the characters in those texts are also very confused by the crowd and what it means. This film is about how capitalism has created a faceless workforce that leads to many people being ignorant of what is truly occurring and they are powerless once they do realize it. One crowd scene that is important to this film takes place when John first enters into adulthood. He enters the city in order to find fame and fortune, but he is greeted by an entirely new environment. This environment is a crowd of people that do not care about him, as they have their own things to worry about. The size of this crowd is immense and it brings with it a deal great of confusion for John. This leads John to realize that even though he is surrounded by people, he is very isolated from everyone else and at the same time, he is very insignificant. During this scene, the crowds are shown from a high angle, which allows the viewer to see how many people are present amongst the skyscrapers and traffic. There is an endless supply of people and vehicles in this city, which is shown when the camera continues to move up and the people, buildings, vehicles do not end. Then, the camera rotates very quickly, which is meant to show how disorienting the movement of the crowd is. This scene is meant to as show the audience how intimidating this environment can be for a person. John has entered into this new world where he is not important at all, but is rather just a speck among all the other specks. This mass culture has created an environment where no single person is even truly visible, as everything is simply a crowd of people. John is able to feel as if he is alone in this world, even though he is surrounded by people, because no one is concerned with his existence. This crowd is similar to the crowd in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Wakefield“, as the author writes of him, “We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him there” (Hawthorne). Soon after, a similar, yet different, scene is shown in this film. In this scene, the camera begins at street level and then tilts upwards in order to show the side of a skyscraper. Then the camera moves to one floor of the building and peers into one of the windows. Through this window is an office building that contains hundreds of rows of office desks and workers, with all of them seemingly being anonymous. This means that their identities do not matter to the company that they work for, as their job is to get their work done in order to support their families and not much else. These people simply do not matter to the company, as they are just mindless drones that do whatever their employers tell them to do. This gives the scene a sense of hopelessness. This crowd also does not matter in the big picture, as everyone is depicted as being exactly the same. Each of these people is obedient to his or her boss and does not ask questions or behave creatively. John is shown later on in this scene as being one of these faceless people who is doing what he has to do to survive in a capitalist society. This scene is meant to convey the fact that not only do people not matter to the crowd on the streets, they also do not matter in most forms of the corporate world. This is much the same as how Babbitt views the world. He is able to use capitalism to his advantage, as he is very good at selling houses, but he does not understand it one bit. He mistakes the fact that he is selling houses for real success in the world because he is completed ignorant of what is occurring in the outside world. He is merely focused on himself and what is happening to him. This scene also is meant to foreshadow why John becomes so unhappy later on in life: He becomes sick of being a member of the crowd. This scene is different from the street scene because it is in a much smaller area, but the outcome is the same. As the film draws to a close, John has become thoroughly saddened by life. He has not been able to find a job that he enjoys and his life at home has become unhappy as well. A scene that depicts this is while he is waiting outside of an unemployment office. He is swept away by the crowd, since the crowd still does not care about any one individual. It is at this point that John feels as if he is no longer part of the crowd. It is said in the film that “We do not know how big the crowd is, and what opposition it is...until we get out of step with it," and this is true for John because in attempting to get away from the crowd, he sees how many people it takes to compose it. At the unemployment office, John is passed over for a job in favor of a man with much more hope than he. John cannot help but think of how similar this was to him when he first arrived in the city. This man repeats what John had said when he first arrived in the city when he says, “All I need is an opportunity.” This shows John that the crowd is never ending because people are constantly joining it. He was not the first to join the crowd, nor will he be the last. This scene is meant to show that even though John is now aware of the crowd that he was a part of before, the crowd still does not care about him. John is not able to escape the crowd because society has become the crowd. This scene is meant to show that for every person that attempts to escape this crowd, there will be someone there to replace him or her so it will never end. This is also similar to what is written at the end of “Wakefield”, as in this story, “Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe” (Hawthorne). This is similar to how John stepped aside and lost his place in the crowd. This film is significant because it was an early work that showed the effects of capitalism on the individual. John Sims was forced to become a member of the crowd whose individuality did not matter to the masses. Many times in society, we forget about being an individual and simply go along with what is expected of us from the crowd, even though the crowd is not even concerned with us. This film, and its supporting texts, are an attempt to show the world how destructive capitalism can be because of the power of the crowd. Read More